William J Donovan

William Joseph Donovan

William J "Wild Bill" Donovan is recognised as the father of American centralised intelligence. His consequential role was defined by his invention of modern, centralised American strategic intelligence and his leadership of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, the direct precursor to both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S. Special Operations Forces.

His career encompassed distinction as a military hero, a corporate lawyer, a diplomat, and an intelligence architect. Donovan’s core strategic thesis was that in a global and totalitarian war, intelligence must be global and totalitarian.

Early Life, Education, and Legal Career

William Joseph Donovan was born in Buffalo, New York, in AD 1883, the grandson of Irish immigrants, into a working-class, Irish Catholic family. He was a highly successful senior partner in a Wall Street law firm, despite growing up in a tough, working-class neighbourhood.

Although he was Roman Catholic and a lifelong Republican, he believed in supporting the most qualified individuals regardless of their political affiliation, a flexibility that later proved crucial. Donovan neither smoked nor drank. As a young man, he was deeply religious and initially wished to become a Catholic Priest.

World War I Military Distinction

Donovan’s extensive military credibility was established during World War I, where he became one of the most decorated soldiers and officers of the war. He served in the New York National Guard Regiment, the Fighting 69th (later designated the 165th New York Infantry Regiment).

The nickname Wild Bill was acquired during his youth, although the exact origin is subject to various suggestions, ranging from the football field to the battlefield. Donovan did not mind the publicity surrounding the moniker but preferred to be addressed as Colonel Donovan or simply Bill by close friends.

During the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918, Donovan, then a major and later a lieutenant colonel, bravely directed his outnumbered battalion, despite being wounded, in attacking and overcoming a superior German force. Later, during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in October AD 1918, he rallied and regrouped faltering units under heavy fire, waving his pistol overhead. He refused to be evacuated despite a severe wound to his right leg, continuing in command for five hours until a German counterattack was halted. His actions during the River Ourcq crossing in France in AD 1918, where he led his battalion in capturing enemy strongholds, earned him the Medal of Honor.

Donovan is believed to be the only person in American history to have received all four of the nation’s highest military and national security decorations: the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Security Medal. He also received two Purple Hearts and the French Croix de guerre, among other international decorations.

Diplomatic and Intelligence Foundation

In the period between the World Wars, Donovan pursued a secret life alongside his corporate law practice, maintaining an active interest in military and world affairs. He obtained overseas contacts and clients, including some London banks and British politicians such as Winston Churchill, travelling overseas frequently.

His initial intelligence career began while serving with the American Expeditionary Force during the Russian Civil War. In 1920, President Franklin D Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, made Donovan a member of the Office of Naval Intelligence and sent him to Siberia to observe and report on anti-Bolshevik operations and Japanese activities.

In the 1930s and early 1940s, Donovan acted as a personal intelligence agent for President Roosevelt, conducting fact-finding missions across the globe. He toured battle lines during fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, and studied modern weaponry and tactics in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, reporting his findings back to Roosevelt.

A staunch interventionist in the foreign policy debate leading up to World War II, Donovan actively supported vigorous assistance to Britain and other allies against Hitler.

Following the swift German conquests across Europe by 1940, President Roosevelt dispatched Donovan to London as a special envoy in the summer of 1940. His mission was to encourage the beleaguered British, assess their ability to withstand the German onslaught, and learn about their new methods of warfare, particularly unconventional warfare.

Donovan received extraordinary access to British military and intelligence secrets through meetings with figures such as Prime Minister Churchill, King George VI, Sir Stuart Graham Menzies (head of the Secret Intelligence Service, SIS), and Admiral John H. Godfrey (director of the Royal Navy’s intelligence service). He was briefed on the creation of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a commando agency tasked by Churchill to set Europe ablaze with sabotage and guerrilla resistance.

The Creation of the COI and OSS

Upon his return to the United States, Donovan publicly asserted the necessity of American aid for Britain and the critical need for a new, centralised American strategic intelligence agency prepared to wage unconventional warfare. He warned that Hitler’s successes were achieved through systematic propaganda and active treachery by fifth columnists, arguing the U.S. needed an agency capable of gathering, analysing, and acting on intelligence, including propaganda and sabotage.

In June 1941, following increased Anglo-American cooperation and pressure from British intelligence officials like William Stephenson and Admiral John Godfrey, President Roosevelt agreed to Donovan’s proposal. On July 11, 1941, Roosevelt established the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI) under his executive authority, appointing Donovan to head it.

This civilian position reported directly to the President and was intended to collect and analyse intelligence information for senior policymakers. Donovan secured three guarantees from the President: that he would report directly to him, that secret funds would be available for COI work, and that all government departments would supply needed materials. The formal language of the COI’s founding order was purposely vague, avoiding terms such as military, strategic, intelligence, or psychological warfare, as Roosevelt and Donovan preferred not to have a definitive charter in writing for specific functions, especially as the country was not yet at war.

After the United States entered World War II following the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, the COI was deemed structurally and functionally limited. On June 13, 1942, President Roosevelt issued a Military Order replacing the COI (minus its Foreign Information Service, which became part of the Office of War Information) with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), establishing it under the jurisdiction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

Donovan was recalled to active duty, promoted to Colonel, and appointed Director of Strategic Services. Donovan was later promoted to Major General. He is recognised as the father of the CIA because of the groundwork he laid for America's vast intelligence network.

Directorship of the OSS

The OSS was the first Allied organisation to merge the functions of intelligence gathering and special operations, taking inspiration from British intelligence models. Donovan’s design successfully married academic analysis with covert action, reflecting his belief that intelligence must be global and totalitarian.

Donovan recruited an exceptionally diverse range of personnel for the OSS, including scholars, scientists, bankers, correspondents, tycoons, psychologists (such as Carl Jung), football stars, circus managers, circus freaks, safe crackers, lock pickers, and pickpockets. Early recruitment also included lawyers, business people, and cooks such as Julia Child, as well as notorious criminals. The recruits included America’s social elite and top minds, leading some to joke that OSS stood for Oh-So-Social.

The OSS structure under Donovan comprised numerous specialised branches:

• Research and Analysis (R&A):  The strategic core responsible for the collection, synthesis, and dissemination of non-clandestine, strategic intelligence, often staffed by noted scholars and academics. The R&A branch quickly focused discussions on religion, treating it as a key tool for manipulation, often referred to as worldview warfareor Weltanschauung.
• Secret Intelligence (SI):  Focused on espionage and human intelligence (HUMINT) operations.
• Special Operations (SO) and Operational Groups (OG):  Paramilitary components responsible for unconventional warfare, sabotage, and guerrilla operations behind enemy lines. This section carried out numerous acts of sabotage and disrupted enemy communications, supporting local resistance movements in places like Italy, France, and China.
• Morale Operations (MO): Responsible for psychological warfare (PSYOPs), using propaganda and disinformation (both black and grey) to demoralise the enemy military and civilian populations, induce confusion, and sow distrust.
• X-2 (Counterespionage):  Dedicated to counterintelligence, working to identify and neutralise enemy intelligence efforts.
• Research and Development (R&D):  Headed by Stanley Lovell, this department developed specialised weapons, explosive devices, and equipment for espionage and sabotage, such as the Beano grenade, umbrella gun, and explosive flour code-named Aunt Jemima.

Donovan’s background as a Roman Catholic was instrumental in cultivating critical alliances with the Vatican, beginning in 1942. The OSS viewed Catholicism and the Vatican as a geopolitical institution and the most crucial focus of its systematic religious approach.

This religious strategy was officially referred to as worldview warfare, or Weltanschauung, operating on the philosophy that human motivations often involve conceptual, spiritual, or ideological factors beyond simple bodily desires.

The OSS studied various religious groups to determine their pragmatic utility for intelligence manipulation and control, seeing religion as a tool for American soft power and control, serving Pax Americana.

Post-War Transition and Legacy

By 1945, Donovan planned to expand the OSS to combat the emerging threat of Communism. On November 18, 1944, he sent President Roosevelt the formal proposal known as the Donovan Plan, urging the creation of a permanent, peacetime centralised intelligence service under direct Presidential supervision.

This proposal met powerful opposition, particularly from the Army and Navy, who feared losing control of their intelligence assets, and FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, who fiercely protected his jurisdiction. The public controversy generated by leaks of the plan in February 1945 led many to fear the creation of an American Gestapo.

President Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 ended Donovan’s hope of securing the OSS’s future under his initial plan. President Harry Truman, who was inexperienced in foreign affairs and mistrusted secret government agencies, signed Executive Order 9621, dissolving the OSS on September 20, 1945.

After the OSS was dissolved, Donovan resumed his legal career. He served as Assistant to Robert Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor for the Nuremberg Trials, applying his intelligence knowledge to the initial investigations and the gathering of information on members of the Third Reich.

Despite its termination, the strategic utility of Donovan's organisation rapidly led to its resurgence. The functions of the OSS were temporarily resumed by the Strategic Services Unit (SSU) and later by the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), created in January AD 1946.

The organisational structures he established served as the indispensable foundation for the eventual, permanent establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by the National Security Act of 1947. The CIA was staffed almost entirely by veterans of the COI and OSS.

Although Donovan declined any role in the CIA at its founding in 1947, he later campaigned for the directorship but was refused by President Eisenhower. Instead, Eisenhower appointed Donovan as Ambassador to Thailand ( 1953–1954), where his activities focused on containing the expansion of the People’s Republic of China.

William J. Donovan died in 1959 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His statue stands in the lobby of the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia, symbolising his status as the guiding spirit and founding father of the organisation.

Donovan’s vision successfully integrated intelligence collection, strategic analysis, counterespionage, and unconventional warfare, creating a blueprint for the modern intelligence and special operations communities. The dual legacy of the dissolved OSS is seen in the CIA and the doctrine maintained by the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which uses the spearhead design on its insignia as an homage to the OSS emblem.

The complexity of Donovan’s legacy, particularly his successful synthesis of highly unconventional methods like psychological warfare and covert action with scholarly analysis, suggests that he fundamentally viewed the entire world as a strategic chess board. His approach demonstrates that intelligence, for Donovan, was less about simply observing the enemy and more about actively shaping the environment itself, leveraging every available tool—from scholarly research to faith systems and manufactured weapons—to impose a desired reality. This is akin to a master clockmaker who not only reads time accurately but also designs and builds the internal machinery required to keep the world running to his strategic timing.